Matt Vogel Went from Webster to Playing Big-Name Muppets

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ZACH HYMAN | COURTESY SESAME WORKSHOP

Matt Vogel is the puppet captain for Sesame Street and works with The Muppets Studio.

Big Bird, Kermit the Frog, Count von Count, these characters are Muppet icons, and Matt Vogel plays them all. He started in 1996 as an understudy to Caroll Spinney who famously played Big Bird on Sesame Street. Now he's the puppet captain for the series, works with The Muppets Studio and produces the podcast Below the Frame with Matt Vogel, where he gives listeners the inside scoop on what it's like to be a Muppeteer. He recently returned to his alma mater, Webster University, to give the commencement address. We caught up with him the day before his big speech.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Big Bird is a Muppet you wear, right? It must be hot in there.

It is hot in there. It's like 4,000 feathers, which doesn't seem like it'd be heavy or hot, but it's both of those.

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JULIAN WASS | COURTESY SESAME WORKSHOP

Matt Vogel plays Big Bird and Count von Count.

It must be hard to do all those different voices when you learn different Muppets.

There's a whole bunch of different things you have to learn, but yes, the voice is one of those things. There's also a lot of very intricate, subtle puppetry moves. That's the technical aspect of it. We're trying to make something that isn't real look very real and look like it's breathing and experiencing real emotion. To do that, we have to see our performance. So we're looking at a monitor that shows us what you see at home when you're watching the show.

Everything is above the head. So your arms must get tired. Do you take a lot of breaks?

When we're shooting a show there's always a lot of starting and stopping. But for something like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, we start up at 79th Street in Central Park West, and we head all the way down to 34th Street, which is quite a long way to go. There's not a lot of opportunity to take any breaks. There are thousands of people watching you the whole way down the parade route. So there's a certain amount of stamina that we do have as Muppet performers. But that event is one of the harder things I have to do.

Is Sesame Street affected by the writers' strike?

We finished shooting our season in the middle of March, so we are between seasons right now. But I'm supporting the WGA and their strike, for sure.

What was your reaction when you were asked to be the Commencement speaker?

I was really honored. I have such great memories from being here at Webster. I never really thought that I would be at this point, and I'm going to tell the graduates tomorrow to take a moment and appreciate it. That goes for me as well. I'm going to take a moment to appreciate this honor and being here in this moment.